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Rangyayo
Phonology Consonants The following are phonemic transcriptions of Puchonese consonants. # /ŋ/ appears only in the syllable coda. # /s, z/ are palatalised ʑ before /i, j/ # /h/ is palatalised ç before /i, j/; and is bilabialised ɸ before /u, w/ # /ts, dz, tsʰ/ are palatalised dʑ, tɕʰ before /i, j/ # /ɾ/ is an alveolar flap ɾ in the syllable onset; and is l in the syllable coda. Vowels Monophthongs # /i/ is pronounced /ɪ/ before velar codas /ŋ, k̚/ # /u/ is /ʊ/ before velar codas /ŋ, k̚/ Diphthongs In the Puchonese language, because semivowels /j/ and /w/ may follow consonants in initial position in a word, which no other consonant can do, and perhaps due also to yenmun orthography, which transcribes them as vowels, they are sometimes considered to be elements of diphthongs and triphthongs rather than separate consonant phonemes. # /ju/ is pronounced /jʊ/ before velar codas /ŋ, k̚/ # /uɪ/ is a falling diphthong uɪ after a consonant in an open syllable; and is a rising diphthong wi when it is a syllable of its own or in a closed syllable. Triphthongs Positional allophones Puchonese consonants have two principal positional allophones: initial and final. The initial form is found at the beginning of a syllable and the final form is found at the end of a syllable. All plosives t, k are unreleased t̚, k̚ at the end of a syllable. Final ɾ is a liquid l. Phonotactics Puchonese syllable structure is maximally CgVC, where the first C'' is the initial consonant; ''g is a semivowel glide /j/ or /w/; V'' is a vowel; the second ''C is a coda. Any consonant but /ŋ/ may occur initially, whereas only /m, n, ŋ, p, t, k, l/ may occur finally. Below is the table of all syllable finals (gVC) in Puchonese. # pronounced wi when it is a syllable of its own or before codas /n, t̚, l/; and pronounced wɪ before codas /ŋ, k̚/ # pronounced uɪ after an onset in an open syllable. Additional finals /wam/, /wɛm/, /wim/, /wap/, /wɛp/, /wip/ can be found in foreign loanwords. Vowel harmony Traditionally, the Puchonese language has had strong vowel harmony; that is, in pre-modern Puchonese, not only did the inflectional and derivational affixes change in accordance to the main root vowel, but native words also adhered to vowel harmony. However, this rule is no longer observed strictly in modern Puchonese. In modern Puchonese, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia and conjugation. There are three classes of vowels in Puchonese: positive, negative and neutral. The vowel classes loosely follow the vowel heights. Exchanging positive vowels with negative vowels usually creates different nuances of meaning, with positive vowels sounding fast, hot, dry, hard, solid, focused or aggressive, and negative vowels sounding slow, cold, wet, soft, insubstantial, diffuse or tranquil. Pitch accent Grammar Nouns Puchonese has no grammatical number, gender or articles. Thus, Puchonese nouns are non-inflecting. The noun iku ( ) can be translated as "dog", "dogs", "a dog", "the dog", "some dogs" and so forth, depending on context. However, as part of the extensive pair of grammatical systems that Puchonese possesses for honorification and politeness, nouns too can be modified. Nouns take politeness prefix a-'' ( ) to produce their respectful forms. A few examples are given in the following table. Puchonese does not differentiate between count and mass nouns. A small number of nouns have collectives formed by reduplication, for example, ''oro ( ) "person" and orooro ( ) "people". However, reduplication is not productive. Words in Puchonese referring to more than one of something are collectives, not plurals. Orooro, for example, means "a lot of people" or "people in general". It is never used to mean "two people". A phrase like phu'tsin ke orooro ( ) would be taken to mean "the people of Puchon", or "the population of Puchon", not "two people from Puchon" or even "a few people from Puchon". Lacking grammatical number, the noun hapi ( ) may refer to a single bird or several birds. Where number is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word). For example, hapi ho ik ( ) means eight birds. Pronouns Suffixes are added to pronouns to make them collective, for example, kigomi-te ( ) "we" and asobeda-ne ( ) "they". Demonstratives Demonstratives occur in the i-'', ''ne-'', and ''ko-'' series. The ''i-'' (proximal) series refers to things closer to the speaker than the hearer, the ''ne-'' (mesial) series for things closer to the hearer, and the ''ko-'' (distal) series for things distant to both the speaker and the hearer. With ''ma-'', demonstratives turn into the corresponding interrogative form. Demonstratives limit, and therefore precede, nouns; thus ''i maro ( ) for "this stone", ne maro ( ) for "that stone", and ko maro ( ) for "that stone over there". Writing system The modern Puchonese writing system uses two main scripts: * Hanji ( ), ideographs from Chinese characters, and * Yenmun ( ), a Korean phonemic alphabet organised into syllabic blocks that make up words. To a lesser extent, modern written Puchonese also uses the Latin alphabet. Examples include abbreviations such as "CD" and "DVD". Romanised Puchonese, called romaji ( ), is frequently used by foreign students of Puchonese, who have not yet mastered the two main scripts, and by native speakers for computer input. Usage of scripts Direction of writing Written language reforms Romanisation There are a number of methods of rendering Puchonese in Roman letters. The Mackenzie method of romanisation, designed for English speakers, is a de facto standard widely used inside and outside Puchon. Category:Languages